Home and Garden Tips

Planning and planting a garden is easier than you may think, and fresh grown vegetables, herbs, and flowers are great rewards that are worth a couple weekends of getting your garden underway. Below are a few basic tips to use around your home and garden.

1. Before you begin to dig up a place in your yard for your garden, decide how much work you want to put into gardening and how big of yield you hope to harvest. If you just start tearing up yard, you may end up with too much garden and wasted space.

2. Many will till their garden twice before planting. The first till is to break up and loosen hard soil to about 12 to 14 inches of depth. The second should till compost and fertilizer into the soil.

3. Depending on your soil type, mix in compost material and possibly peat moss to add nutrients and to aid in water absorption and drainage.

4. Keep soil around the base of plants loose to aid in water and nutrient absorption.

5. Watering more deeply allows longer periods of time between watering. If it is sunny and hot, water in early morning or at night. There is less water evaporation at these times which allows water to soak into the soil.

6. For lawn care, one deep watering is better than watering lightly several times. In normal summer conditions, lawns need about one inch of rain per week.

7. To help keep water from evaporating from lawns, keep lawns cut at about two inches, or so. Not gathering grass clippings will allow for natural compost to develop which adds nutrients to the soil of your lawn.

8. To slow evaporation from your garden, put a couple of inches of mulch on the surface of the soil.

These are basic home and garden tips that can be used in most climates and regions of the country. Your local home and garden professional can also give you helpful tips, especially those that may particularly apply to the local area in which you live.